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"I'm so sick of losing."
In his peripheral vision he saw Clara looking at him, confused. "You didn't lose," she said softly. "You saved the town."
"I don't mean the war. I'll lose any war you like." Flashes of the despair on Gallifrey. Oh he knew now, that he had saved them, but it still felt so real.
He turned away from Clara, playing with the ring on his finger. In his mind wisps of blonde hair and bare eyes, normally framed by too much make-up, looking tiredly, but happy, into his own. And a cold beach in Norway.
"I'm sick of losing people."
And after the realization about the meaning of this face, after saving Ashildr, the Doctor and Clara went back to the Tardis.
"I'm not sure, but it's entirely possible she has lost the ability to die."
Clara smirked. "The ability?" Of course she didn't understand.
"Oh dying is an ability, believe me." And he thinks his nonchalant answer shocked her.
"Barring accidents, she may now be functionally immortal." He unlocked the Tardis and Clara caught herself.
"If the repairkit never stops working, then ... why did you give her two?"
He turned to face her. "Immortality isn't living forever, that's not what it feels like." He took a deep breath before he added "Immortality is everybody else dying."
And he remembered all the people he had outlived or lost. But he also thought of Captain Jack, who has it way worse than the Doctor, and the Metacrisis, who had now the world.
"She might meet someone she can't bear to lose."
"I could save the world, but lose you."
He didn't miss how Clara's gaze wandered to his ring.
"You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of mine with you."
"That happens ... I believe."
